Author Information
Laura Cormio, University of Foggia, ItalyAngelo Rega, Pegaso University, Italy
Maria Ermelinda De Carlo, Pegaso University, Italy
Pierpaolo Limone, Pegaso University, Italy
Maura Mengoni, Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy
Abstract
In recent years, the design of learning spaces has increasingly gained traction in school contexts, capturing the attention of scholars, architects, and educational communities. Following a long period of standstill in the condition of school buildings, European countries have undertaken significant efforts to renovate and modernise their school facilities through new policies and design guidelines. At the same time, a major trend in education has emerged: the adoption of eXtended Reality (XR) technologies to support and enhance learning experiences. However, despite the proliferation of research and practical implementations in both fields, physical space design and immersive learning experiences, there remains a lack of an integrated theoretical framework linking the two. Therefore, this study aims at creating a unified theoretical framework to represent and describe how virtual environments supporting learning experiences should be designed, outlining first practical indications on how the various key principles to design physical spaces can be translated into virtual environments. Using thematic analysis, the research examines key international documents and guidelines to identify the core design features and pedagogical principles on both fronts. These are then intertwined through the construction of a correlation matrix that highlights alignments and points of translation between physical and virtual design strategies. While the qualitative findings of this study require further analyses such as ethnographic techniques or quantitative assessments, this work represents a first step towards bridging the fields of educational architecture and immersive learning in that it provides preliminary design guidelines for XR learning environments.
Paper Information
Conference: ACE2025Stream: Design
This paper is part of the ACE2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Cormio L., Rega A., Carlo M., Limone P., & Mengoni M. (2026) How Should Immersive Learning Spaces Be Designed? Formalising the Intersection Between School Design and XR Technologies ISSN: 2186-5892 – The Asian Conference on Education 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 47-58) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.5
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-5892.2026.5
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